Biography
He was born on 14 March 1944 in Athens to a Greek mother and a German father. She spent her early years in Anafiotika, Plaka. Her first sounds were Byzantine music and island songs in Santorini where she lived until her teenage years. She served Greek traditional music with her very special personal style, introducing the electric sound in her arrangements. Her musical writing in her folk songs is influenced by the work of Vassilis Tsitsanis, and as a performer she often includes his songs in her recitals. She has set poetry by Sappho, Kostas Varnalis, the Greek poet of the seas Nikos Kavvadias and George Sarantaris. In 2020 he set and posted a cycle of five poems by Kiki Dimoula. In most of her songs she writes the lyrics and music herself. In 1976, at the "request" of Manos Hadjidakis, Mariza Koch composed a ballad protesting the Turkish invasion of Cyprus entitled "Panagia mou - Panagia mou" and participated with this song in the Eurovision contest in The Hague. From the 1970s she began to travel around the world singing in major theatres and prestigious music festivals in Western Europe, Russia, Canada, USA, Latin America, Australia, India, Middle East and Africa as an ambassador of Greek music. In 1980 she was the first Western singer to perform in China and in the framework of international cultural exchanges she represented Greece in Beijing with a corresponding performance of the Beijing Opera in Athens. In 2009 she represented Greece at the International Country Music Week festival held in Mao's homeland, where she was awarded the "Best Singer" prize among 32 countries from five continents. In the summer of 2010, she travelled again to China as a representative of the Hellenic Music Education Association (of which she is an honorary member), in order to attend the 29th ISME World Congress on Music Education. At the end of the Congress he received, with the whole Greek delegation, the flag of the 30th Congress, which was held in 2012 in Greece.
About her tours Marisa Koch says:
"I have sung in many of the world's greatest theatres, but also in countless schools, cafes, rural warehouses and the smallest villages of our country. I am as proud of one as I am of the other. With my songs I want to confess what I feel while traveling in our homeland. In my eyes it seems to be the richest country in the world in natural beauty, in people's characters, in history, in music, in arts, in religious splendor, in depth of human feelings."
In 2011, in collaboration with the composer Filtig, he created the electronic music project Platonia, in which he performed the vocal parts.
In 1996 she founded her own record label, VERSO MUSIC, with the aim of recording traditional songs from all over Greece and publishing children's recordings.
From the 1990s onwards, Marisa Koch focused much of her energy on the musical education of children, both theoretically and practically. In 1996 she started giving lessons to children. Then in 1999 she created the experiential music education method (teaching in schools). In 2004 she founded and still runs the "Marisa Koch Centre for Experiential Music, Movement and Speech" for experiential music teaching to pre-school and school-age children. In 2008, in collaboration with the Athens Conservatory, she created the "Mariza Koch Children's Choir of Traditional Singing".
He published children's albums with traditional toy songs and gave performances for children with the plays "The Mermaid Travels Little Alexander" and "The Quilt with the Golden Bells".
Her books "The Mermaid travels with Little Alexander" (Kedros, 1996), "I sing with Mariza, I learn Greek" (Stamoulis, 2010) and "The Quilt with the Golden Bells" (Stamoulis, 2011) - accompanied by cds - are aimed at children who are practicing learning the Greek language and Greek musical tradition.
In 2019, "The Blonde Girl of Santorini", a biography of her childhood, was published by Metahimio Publications.
She was honored for her musical contribution by the Hellenic Women Scientists Association and by Cornell University in New York as a "woman creator".
He is an honorary member of the Theraiki Society for Science, Letters and Arts and the Hellenic Association for Music Education. He is also a member of the Artistic Committee for Music Schools of the Ministry of Education, Lifelong Learning and Religious Affairs.
In October 2015, the University of Patras held a tribute for Mariza Koch, for the completion of 50 years of uninterrupted presence in the field of music, where she was awarded an honorary diploma and sang an extensive selection from her repertoire.
The Hellenic Association for Music Education (E.E.M.E.), in the context of its 7th Conference on: "Music Literacy.
Today, her educational work is "housed" in the Department of Music Studies of the Ionian University.